Strip clubs and other devious places for men were around much longer than the Lusty Lady, and Leonard Garfield, executive director of Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry, delved into the grittier side of Seattle in our 22nd installment of Ask MOHAI. (Got a question for next time? Send it here.)

Sexing it up in Pioneer Square

Seattle has had a long and uneasy relationship with the sex industry. As early as the 1860’s, dance halls (that promised much more than just dancing) sat atop of the sawdust piles of Yesler’s mill in Pioneer Square. By the 1890’s raucous “sporting clubs” – establishments where men could enjoy drinking, gambling and loose women – ran the length of Seattle’s Tenderloin district south of Yesler Way. In fact, Seattle’s Tenderloin became one of the largest red-light districts on the West Coast, rivaling bawdy San Francisco.

Among the most successful of Seattle’s 19th century “sporting clubs” was the People’s Theater. Catering to the city’s swelling population of loggers, miners and sailors, the People’s Theater opened in 1890 in the wake of the Great Seattle Fire. It was managed by John Considine, aka “Boss Sport,” and quickly became one of the most successful of the so-called “box theaters.” Box theaters were a favorite venue among lascivious Seattleites, allowing patrons to enjoy performers onstage and purchase drinks from hostesses, who also offered to assuage their customers’ loneliness in curtained-off boxes. Box theaters were dependent on hostesses’ liquor sales to make a profit. So when city officials attempted to close the theaters in a fit of moral fervor in 1893, they did so by banning alcohol in any theater – thus killing the profitability of the Tenderloin. The People’s Theater promptly went out of business and “Boss Sport” left town. His legacy – the sale of liquor in Washington state strip-clubs – remains illegal to this day.

Decades later during the 1980’s, sex shops like the Lusty Lady and Déjà Vu began to sprout on First Avenue, gaining it the nickname “Flesh Avenue.” In each case, these so-called “gentlemen’s clubs” have had a lucrative, though, controversial presence in our city.